“Why do we always say life is short when it’s the longest thing we’ll ever experience?”

–

<unknown>

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“I love that word.

Forever.

I love that forever doesn’t exist, but we have a word for it anyway, and use it all the time.

It’s beautiful and doomed. “

—

Viv Albertine

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Time.

Poetically speaking … Time is always hungry for many of the things we dearly want to endure.

Time is beautiful and doomed.

Oh.

And time typically equals anxiety. Anxiety over time wasted and even on time not wasted <too short>.

Why?

We feel a natural anxiety over uncertainty. Anxiety that things beyond our control, <metaphorically> cormorants flying by, will takes things away from us we either haven’t had the opportunity to enjoy, or maybe worse, the things we want to hold on to <the things we did enjoy>.

I always find it fascinating that we invest so much of Time on time itself. I also find it fascinating how Time is usually depicted.

For such a dastardly character, this Time guy, time itself is typically fairly unremarkable when depicted in literature. Bald and often with beard … he could be taken for almost any senior citizen. And he, yes … always a he, is seen most likely with these things :

–The scythe: represents the destructive effects of transience

– The hourglass: is the visual metaphor of time’s passage

– The wings: suggest our psychological sense of time’s rapidity

It makes you wonder: when did we decide to make Time so unremarkable or even ‘despicable?’

Well. It was different in the good ole days. Time wasn’t quite so despicable in the past.

In fact. Time was associated not with finiteness, but rather infiniteness.

In the way way back machine you would be most likely to see Time as “the Divine principle of eternal and inexhaustible creativeness.”

<most likely symbolized by the ouroboros, a snake swallowing its tail>

Ah.

Time as divine. What a nice thought. I know we all value our time <despite the fact we more often waste it than maximize it>, but thinking of it as eternal & inexhaustible is something we do not read about often today.
And while today you read article after article about the finiteness of our available time .we are more likely to view this ‘inexhaustible creativeness’ as oddly, well, elastic — especially elastic when viewed thru a good – bad lens.

—

“Bad things come in a hurry, good things come in time.”

William Chapman

—

But, to me, even discussing time is elastic, or inelastic, seem kind of wacky.

Time, in and of itself, is actually nothing.

It is simply a void to be filled.

Therefore, philosophically or conceptually, time isn’t really time.

It is an experience or feeling or whatever falls into that void.

It is space defined by degrees of energy, effort, attention and experience.

Somebody smarter than I has described Time falling into two separate categories in our heads:

‘measured time’

what appears on a clock or watch

‘experienced time’

time speeds up or slows down depending on the experience

Time always seems to inevitably be attached to something intangible when building value … well … actually … the equation is:

And it becomes even more difficult to measure because we put such a high value on individual freedom and autonomy and self-determination with regard to doing whatever we want whenever we want in whatever way we choose … and yet time is most efficiently spent when controlled.

——-

“So much universe, and so little time.”

Terry Pratchett

———–

“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

=

Mark Strand

—-

Technology has certainly affected how we view time and its elasticity <or inelasticity>. Changes in technology have blurred many of what we used to think of as some reassuring Time boundaries.

The biggest blurred boundary? … where does work stop and life begin? In and of itself this wouldn’t really matter to us. we would adapt and it wouldn’t be an oft discussed social issue.

However. Other factors are impacting us at exactly the same time. Many of the issues facing us today in the world, and in our lives, appear to have no clear right or wrong answers. That anxiety or additional stress upon our lives, which creates some ‘lack of comfort in boundaries’ translates into us seeking boundaries elsewhere. Time is one of those mostly because, rationally, we believe it is within our purview to actually control it <albeit we keep getting tugged by external influences which make us feel less control>.

Time seems despicable because it is so often caught in the wretched hollow of the in between of individuals and societies each trying to organize seeming chaos with some boundaries.